A Named Clothing Maisa Denim Jacket

When Named Clothing released their Playground collection, I was so excited about the Maisa Jacket and the Reeta dress. I’ve always been a big fan of Saara and Laura Huhta’s company – I think their patterns, styling, and photography are top notch. I particularly like the no-frills style of their pattern writing, and bizarrely the fact that their seam allowances are 1cm – less waste!

The Maisa jacket particularly appealed to me as I had been saving two knackered old pairs of my boyfriend’s jeans for over a year, with no particular project in mind. Annoyingly, I couldn’t quite fit the whole pattern out of them, and so used some extra denim in my stash for the upper sleeves and back panel. I did also intend to do a bit of embroidery for the back (and even started it!) but I quickly decided that I have too much on my plate at the moment and that keeping it simple was probably a good idea. I cut a UK size 10, and didn’t need to make any adjustments. Before I started cutting the jeans I took a picture of them and submitted it to Wendy’s Ward #MIYMarch17 2nd prized Saturday – AND WON! I was totally gobsmacked, and have now received my amazing prizes!!!

I really enjoyed sewing it up. As there was so much topstitching, I also hooked up my old sewing machine and sewed the seams with this, and completed the topstitching with my Atelier 3. This really sped things up, as well as making me feel like a total boss using three machines for one project – I finished all my seams on my overlocker too. On the whole there was nothing too tricky, although the sleeve plackets did give me a bit of trouble, and are not as neat as the rest of the jacket. The waist band also took a bit longer than I thought to get right, and I had to baste it on the machine before finishing.

That said, I am really happy with the finished project. I really like that the different jeans have different colours and areas of wear, and also the big flaw in the collar – when cutting it out I messed it up and there was a big chunk missing, but rather than cutting it out again, I decided to just repair it and carry on. The finished repair is really obvious, but I love it.

In the pictures I’m also wearing the oversized t-shirt from the new Maker’s Atelier book. It’s a really simple and nice big t-shirt, which I made from start to finish in 2 hours, including cutting and tracing! It’s also finished it with one of my new labels I had made by The Dutch Label shop, which arrived last week and have made me very happy indeed.